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quainted with them, and who can be satisfied with good sense and sound morality, without looking for wit, for elegance, or for invention, will be inclined to peruse them: and I have no doubt, but that he may be induced to think with me, that many of the maxims of Persius might be observed in the present age, with considerable advantage both to its morals, and to its taste in literature.

I cannot conclude this Preface without lamenting, that an early and untimely death should have prevented the Poet, whose works I have translated, from giving them a more finished appearance. His short day was so truly glorious,

that it ever must be lamented it was closed so soon. Above all, the fate of Persius must have been mourned by the friendly Cornutus. It was his bosom, which had first received and cherished the neglected plant-it was his care, which had long fostered it with such fond and assiduous culture it was his arm, which had already

warded off a thousand dangers. Alas! the flower

C

was just expanded in full blossom to the morning sun, when the day overcast, and this promised pride of the garden perished by the relentless storm.

THE

LIFE OF PERSIUS.

AUL ULUS PERSIUS FLACCUS, according to the fragment ascribed to Probus, was born on the day before the Nones of December, in the consulship of Fabius Persicus, and Lucius Vitellius; and died in that of Rubrius Marius, and Asinius Gallus, on the eighth of the Kalends of December. But as there were only twenty-eight years between these two consulships, the author of the fragment is afterwards guilty of a glaring mistake, in stating that Persius died at thirty years

of age.

Persius was born at Volaterræ in Etruria. He was of the equestrian order, and was allied to some of the noblest families of Rome. The author of the fragment says, his father died when Persius was scarcely six years old. But the account given by our Poet himself, seems to contradict this assertion.

Sæpe oculos memini tangebam parvus olivo,

Grandia si nollem morituri verba Catonis

Discere, ab insano multum laudanda magistro,

Quæ pater adductis sudans audiret amicis.

Jure etenim id summum, quid dexter senio ferret,

Scire erat in votis, damnosa canicula quantum

Raderet, &c.

What, could a child, not six

years of age, have occasioned his father a sweating, because he could not repeat Cato's dying speech? And was this same infant, who was to have publicly recited the dying words of the Roman patriot, in

the habit of playing at hazard, and of making

calculations of chances?

Persius studied at Volaterræ, till he was twelve

years of age. After that period, he was under the tuition of two masters at Rome, one of whom was a grammarian, and the other a rhetorician. The author of the fragment says, Persius did not become the pupil of Cornutus, till he had reached his sixteenth year. But our Poet tells us, his acquaintance with Cornutus did not commence till after he had taken the virile gown:

Cum primum pavido custos mihi purpura cessit—

Now the age at which the prætexta was laid aside, was seventeen years.

Among the number of friends and companions of Persius, were the poets Lucan and Bassus.

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